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Transcript:

00:00:00 Michele Goodwin:

Welcome to The Magazine, and in this issue hitting the newsstands, Trump’s Back- Time to Roll Up Our Sleeves, what you’re going to find is a fierce feminist resistance to the second Trump administration. Ms. reporters spoke to some of the many leaders and organizers, preparing to safeguard decades of hard-fought gains for women and girls, which are now threatened by the Trump Administration and its Project 2025.

And here to delve into the magazine with me is our very own Kathy Spillar, who is the editor of Ms. Magazine. She also is the Executive Director and a founding member of the Feminist Majority Foundation, a national organization working for women’s equality, empowerment, and nonviolence. So, let’s take a peek, with Kathy, into this winter issue.

00:01:38 Michele Goodwin:

Kathy, it’s a pleasure, as always, to be spending time with you. So, thank you, so much, for joining us. We are launching something new, here, which is our listeners, our readers, are getting a preview of the magazine, and so, the magazine that’s coming out, can you give us a sense about what’s going to be in it?

00:01:57 Kathy Spillar: 

Absolutely, and thank you, Michele. Everybody is feeling pretty grim and hopeless, at this point, given what’s happening under even the first couple of weeks of this new administration.

00:02:10 Kathy Spillar:

Shocking. Shocking.

00:02:11 Michele Goodwin:

Shocking.

00:02:12 Kathy Spillar:

Shocking. So, we chose to put a cover together that we are sending a message. It’s bright raspberry, radical raspberry, and the words are time to roll up our sleeves, rolling up our sleeves. We’re saying that it might feel grim and hopeless, but it’s not. It’s a call to action. 

It’s time for feminists everywhere to dig in, stay focused, and make some progress even as we’re fighting back, and that’s the amazing thing about what’s in this issue is we feature these huge numbers of feminists, all across the country, and organizations as well as key individuals who are fighting back, and they need our support.

And so, we need to be there for them, but it doesn’t matter whether it’s on abortion rights, or workplace or equality, LGBT equality, fundamental, you know, freedoms. There’s this amazing force that is fighting back, and so, we feature them in this issue of rolling up our sleeves, because we want people to take heart, take inspiration, and get busy and help.

00:03:21 Michele Goodwin:

I think that’s so critically important, and I love the radical raspberry and the taking on directly, saving, preserving, building a better democracy, which is really what it’s about, and there are women that are poised to do that. There are feminists of all stripes and kinds that are ready to do that. So, I know that the ERA is also something that is very much important to our listeners and our readers, and I think we’ve got some feature in the coming magazine about that, too. 

00:03:54 Kathy Spillar:

That’s right, for the issue that’s on newsstands now, the winter issue, we talk about how state equal rights amendments can be used to make advances.

For example, in New Mexico and in Nevada and Pennsylvania, state ERAs have been used to defend abortion rights and Medicaid funding for abortion, and in New Mexico, the ERA has been used to mandate universal childhood education and childcare, publicly funded childcare, so that New Mexico, by having a state ERA, is now moving forward to address some of the obstacles to equality that women face, because of the affordability issue around childcare and so forth.

Paid family medical leave, paid sick leave, those are policies that can be pursued under state ERAs. So, we’re encouraging that and working with our allies to make that happen and to move forward.

00:05:35 Michele Goodwin:

All right, and just a couple other questions for you, just in terms of rounding out what our listeners and readers can come to expect when diving into our magazine, who are some of the feminists and allies that you’re keeping an eye on and who might be featured in stands now, and what’s going to be coming out soon?

00:05:55 Kathy Spillar:

We have three new senators, Angela Alsobrooks. We have Elissa Slotkin out of Michigan. And we have Lisa Blunt Rochester, out of Delaware. So, you know, two African American women now in the US Senate.

00:06:28 Michele Goodwin:

For the first time ever.

00:06:28 Kathy Spillar:

And they’re poised to fight back. It gives you goosebumps because they’re going to be in there, fighting where it counts, and in the House, there’s 16 new feminist women who have been elected to the United States House. The Democratic Women’s Caucus, now chaired by New Mexico member, Teresa Leger Fernandez, boy, talk about a fightback crowd. Unbelievable. It’s the largest women’s caucus ever.

00:06:58 Michele Goodwin:

It’s real leadership. 

00:07:01 Kathy Spillar:

Yes, and as she told me in an interview that, you know, they’ve been fighting back against Project 2025, and now, they really are on the frontlines, and so, in this issue of the magazine, we celebrate all of them. I mean, there’s new doctors, now, physicians going into the House. There are new former mayors of cities. So, these are not only qualified people, but they understand the problems that real people face.

00:07:29 Michele Goodwin:

Oh, that’s great.

00:07:30 Kathy Spillar:

And they’re going to be able to fight back against the damage that the Trump Administration is doing. Michele, there’s one other article that I want people to know about because I think it’s important, and it’s titled What Americans Want, and we look at what actually happened in the 2024 elections on things like paid family leave policies that got passed in state ballot measures, access to abortion rights, constitutional guarantees to abortion and reproductive healthcare.

Eight measures passed. Unfortunately, Florida sets a high threshold, so, even though, in Florida, 57 percent of the voters said, yes, we want a constitutional amendment on abortion and reproductive healthcare, it takes 60 percent to add it to the constitution, but 8 out of 10 of the measures that were on ballots passed, and even in red states. Missouri now has a constitutional amendment, and there was increases in the minimum wage that were passed.

So, this is really what Americans want. It is not what the Trump Administration is doing, right now. So, we wanted to give people a sense of, you know, when allowed to vote on some of these issues that are feminist issues at the core, the American public is with us. 

So, take heart, join the fight back, join the efforts to move forward. Even in this crisis period, there’s always an opportunity in a crisis to make gains. And that’s what we’re going to be looking for, reporting about, lifting up the voices that are there, figuring this out.

00:09:03 Michele Goodwin:

Kathy Spillar, editor of Ms. Magazine. It’s a pleasure to be with you. Thank you, so much, Kathy.

00:09:10 Kathy Spillar:

Thank you, Michele.

00:09:12 Michele Goodwin:

So, friends, be sure to check out this issue when it hits the newsstands, and in the meantime, you can always take a look at what we have online in our digital space, and be sure to tune in to the myriad of our podcasts, from On the Issues, to Fifteen Minutes of Feminism, and so much more.